


tide in your bones (you know you are home)

by aimerai



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Angst, Denial of Feelings, Emotionally Repressed, Feelings, Homesickness, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Selkies, Sirens, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 06:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12811797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimerai/pseuds/aimerai
Summary: He can do this. He’s been very good at avoiding emotional breakdowns, and it would be a shame to break his two thousand year streak of running away from feelings.





	tide in your bones (you know you are home)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so first of all: thank you to Ash, Amanda, and Nat, who read through this and provided sounding boards and helped me edit my way through this mess of a fic and let me bounce ideas off of them while providing hilarious commentary.  
> Also shoutout to Steph, who once mentioned the concept of 'Siren Mat Barzal' which then stuck with me.  
> I started this fic almost exactly a month ago, when I was mad about the lack of creature fic near Halloween. I wanted to finish before Halloween but you can see how well that worked out.  
> This fic has had several titles throughout its existence, the main one being "2000 years of repression" although "the adventures of mat the idiot siren" got popular near the end. When I first thought up this fic it was subtitled 'Mat Barzal learns to be a real boy.'

Mat’s cardinal rule is ‘don’t get attached.’ He exists in a bubble, just him, old enough that even the things like him think he’s just a myth, gone extinct through the efforts of humankind. Old enough that he’s watched things like him go extinct even in myth, kept alive only in the memory of things like Mat. Even with hockey, he’s careful not to get too attached to any of his teammates, not even the ones who aren’t all the way human. He can’t get attached. He won’t get attached. It makes sense, then, that he breaks that rule for someone who reminds him of his home, and what he used to be, so much greater than what he is now.

The first time he meets Thomas Chabot, he startles badly, and then tries to pass it off as a twitch. Chabot is from the east coast, where the Fair Folk and their descendants almost outnumber the humans, and if he were just one of those, Mat would’ve been fine. What makes Mat startle is the particular flavour of ocean salt and magic and beyond human that Mat smells. Although mostly by choice, Mat’s never met anyone or anything with that particular scent since he left his island. He has to keep his mouth closed and take quick, shallow breaths just so he isn’t overwhelmed, but it feels like the smell clings to the insides of his lungs anyway. Chabot’s eyes are a little wide as they shake hands, focused on the area behind Mat where his wings are, glamoured invisible for those without the Sight, and Mat knows that whatever Chabot is, Chabot sees right through his admittedly flimsy human disguise. He doesn’t say anything then, but he wants to, wants to so much that Mat can almost taste it.

Chabot corners Mat later, in a hotel hallway, when they’re both out of range of any of their teammates. Or, rather, Mat lets Chabot thinks he’s cornered Mat, even though the truth is that Mat was planning to hunt him down. Chabot’s saved him that trouble, at least.

“What are you?” Chabot asks in clipped English, eyes wide, looking somewhat terrified, even though he’s the one pressing Mat into a corner, out of sight. If Mat weren’t pretty much the same size as Chabot and inhumanly deadly, he’d be intimidated. As it is, he’s just amused.

“Don’t you have the Sight?” Mat asks, head cocked slightly, smiling serenely in the way that makes people want to punch him. He was sure Chabot had been able to see Mat’s wings, at the very least. Judging from the way Chabot hadn’t really looked him in the face, Mat had thought Chabot could see a lot more than just his wings. Mat doesn’t have the Sight, exactly, but he has an excellent sense of smell and great eyesight, and centuries of experience to draw upon. Through process of elimination alone, he thinks he knows what Chabot could be, because Mat has never run into anything that smells as viscerally as home but isn’t a siren. There are very few things capable of it. He has to breathe as shallowly as possible, because it hurts, to smell home on someone who isn’t.

Chabot nods. “I do, but I’ve never seen anything like you in my life. What are you?”

Huh. That’s unexpected. Generally anyone who can See Mat is purely terrified of him. And it’s not that Chabot isn’t scared, it’s that his curiosity overpowers his fear. Mat decides that he likes that. He likes it a lot.

“Surely you have a guess?” Mat asks, slipping into a language that most would consider to be French. It’s safer than to speak of such matters in human languages, and besides, Mat doesn’t see the point in spreading what he is more than he needs to. There’s power in being the kind of thing that everyone thinks is extinct. Luck isn’t the only reason Mat’s stayed alive so long.

“I did--I do, but you’re not supposed to exist anymore,” Chabot replies in that same language, relaxing a little. “You’re an Old World myth that died out. You can’t really be a--”

“A siren?” Mat finishes smugly. “I am.”

“I thought sirens were meant to be naked, gorgeous women,” Chabot snipes.

“Sirens can be whatever they choose to be. I could be a gorgeous, naked woman, if I wanted to be, but not to someone with the Sight.” Mat smiles at Chabot for the first time since the two of them met, waits for him to flinch at the rows and rows of sharp, shark-like teeth he’ll be able to See.

Chabot doesn’t. Paradoxically, he relaxes all the way, even knowing that Mat could probably seize and devour him in seconds. Mat knows what his true form looks like, and his estimation of Chabot rises. Chabot is smiling back at him, offering a glimpse of human-looking teeth. “It’s nice to meet someone like you. Smell of blood and death included.”

“Occupational hazard,” Mat shrugs; he is what he was made to be, and no less, so why should he apologise for that? Chabot’s eyes crinkle, like it’s an answer that he appreciates. Like he can hear what Mat isn’t saying out loud. “Now, tell me about you.”

“Do you really not know what I am?” Chabot asks, dark eyes focused on Mat. “I’d think it would be obvious, if you’re as old as you’re supposed to be. I’m not rare like you.”

“Creatures of the sea are a lot rarer than you’d think, in the places where I’ve been living,” Mat admits easily. Doesn’t admit that it was that way on purpose, or that he was seriously knocked askew the first time he realised that Chabot was of the sea. Mat may like him, for being a creature of the sea, and for being unafraid, but Mat doesn’t trust Chabot in the slightest, not with the few things Mat cares about. Not yet, anyway. He wants to, though, because Chabot reminds him far too much of home. “I’ve met a couple of freshwater things, river spirits and the like. You’re meant for the ocean, and you’re not a mermaid, that much I know.”

“How do you know I’m not a mermaid?” Chabot asks, tilting his head a little.

“You don’t stink of fish the way they do,” Mat says, rolling his eyes. “It’s inescapable, with them, and a little bit insufferable. And you don’t have their condescension. They think they’re so much better, for being so popular. Insipid little fools, for the most part, who've never had a useful thought in their lives.”

Chabot laughs, delighted. “I’ll have you know, in that case, that I’m selkie.”

Mat pauses, and considers Chabot’s features with that knowledge. The wide, dark eyes must carry. “Do you ever tan?”

Chabot looks supremely unimpressed with Mat. “No, not really, not that it’s any of your business. Do we have a truce, though? At least for the tournament?”

“Those born of the sea have to stay together,” Mat says solemnly. He’s not technically born of the sea the way Thomas is, but it works. It gets his point across without explaining everything else. Without talking about salt and magic and being more, without talking about eating without regard for anything just to push down reality even farther. “And if you play good hockey, I don’t give a fuck about anything else.”

“Then we’re in agreement,” Chabot says, teeth gleaming. They’re slightly too sharp to be human teeth, and it’s comforting.

“Yes,” Mat says, catching Chabot’s eyes with his and nodding once before smoothly sidestepping around him to head back to his own room. Everything about Chabot is a little bit too much for Mat right now; he screams of the sea and wrenches up all the homesickness that Mat had buried down so far that he'd almost forgotten it existed. It’s been centuries since he left and now it feels like it was just yesterday. Chabot makes Mat remember the things that Mat wants to forget: bone-white beaches with driftwood scattered against them and the glossy black curls of his favourite sister. Mat’s throat is hurting--he should probably feed tonight, just to be sure. It’ll be a bitch to sneak out when they have a curfew, and a bitch to find someone in a foreign country, but he’ll manage. He always has, before.

* * *

The second Mat learns how the Team Canada roster is shaping up, he calls his favourite Québécois hockey player. “Hello, Chabshow,” he says, in a language that anyone around him would assume to be French.

“What do you want, Mat?” Thomas sounds exhausted already. It’s barely mid-November, but to be fair, Thomas had a hard fucking time with the Senators. Mat will eat people for him if he needs it, but he’ll wait till Thomas brings it up, because he should not sound this exhausted when it’s still so early in the season, and because the Senators did him so fucking dirty, and Mat’s bitter on Thomas’s behalf.

“You and I are going to be on the returning squad for World Juniors, and everyone else returning is useless to me right now,” Mat says, inspecting his nails. There’s no blood under them this time, thank goodness. Human bodies are so difficult to deal with sometimes. Mat has to make sure he doesn’t end up with blood under his nails, or flesh stuck in between his teeth. It’s so much _work_ and this string of away games they have doesn’t help at all. And he’s only been back for a couple of days, too. He’s mostly running on an excess of feeding-related feel-good hormones and nothing else.

“Are we going to have a repeat of last year?” Thomas asks, voice getting sharp. “Mat, if I have to worry about someone getting eaten this year, I will fuck you up.”

Okay, yeah, Mat probably owes Thomas an apology for that time he almost ate four different people in a fit of bloodlust, but in his defence, his control had been snapped by that fucking idiot with the pheromone potion. He still thinks Thomas should have let him eat that one, even though it’s the exact opposite of keeping a low profile. The world would have been bettered by the elimination of someone that stupid. Who buys an unknown pheromone potion in a foreign country and then unstoppers it so carelessly that it splashes everywhere? That idiot had destroyed Mat’s control, honed over centuries, almost completely, and it really is thanks to the combined efforts of Chabs and Tito that Mat didn’t take a chunk out of anyone. Mat has a healthy respect for Thomas now, because he can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to stop a siren fixated on blood.

Mat grins, and returns to the conversation. “Or you could just take that last word out.”

The phone is quiet enough for a long enough moment that Mat thinks the call dropped, but then Thomas exhales heavily in a way that practically screams ‘Mat, you are _trying_ my patience.’ Mission accomplished, in that case. “You are, by far, the worst person I know.”

“I’m not a person,” Mat reminds him, almost automatically. “I eat people for a living.”

“You play hockey for a living,” Thomas replies, because he’s a fun-killer who gets fussy about details and thinks Mat should at least try to pass for human, rather than being himself and letting the human ability to ignore shit do the work for him.“And, not that I don’t enjoy discussing how bad you are at passing for human, but why did you call me?”

“Your two Champions are probably making the roster,” Mat says, voice grim. “At least one of them is anyway. It’s inconceivable that neither of them do, at this moment in time, considering that they’ve been back since October and were camp invitees, even though Myers wasn’t skating.”

He’d looked them up during camp in the summer, and their injury history had been sobering, to say the least. They’re both damn good at hiding it, but most like them stay on the fae plane or live lives less in the public eye. Mat respects their dedication to hockey, but doesn’t know how Rouyn made it to the Mem Cup Finals when three of their defencemen were Champions, and two of them were compelled Champions, to boot. Because the thing is? There’s no way the older Lauzon didn’t die on the other plane, when he got that skate blade to the neck. There’s something going on with those Rouyn boys that he doesn’t understand, and he’s not sure he wants to. He wouldn't have survived so long if he didn't know when to keep his nose out of others' business.

Thomas sighs, a sound like the tide coming in. “I know.”

Mat sighs as well, his more musical in nature. “Thomas. Half the tournament is during Yule.”

“I _know_ , Mat,” Thomas says, voice heated. “There’s nothing I can do about it. If they make the roster, they make the roster. I can request that they don’t injure themselves, but they were compelled to be Champions. Firstborns, remember?”

“Jérémy Lauzon died on the other plane during playoffs, Thomas,” Mat says, voice deadly calm. It’s not like Thomas to be this obtuse. Usually it’s Mat’s job to be wilfully ignorant while Thomas forces him to face reality, and he can't say that he likes the role reversal. “I want to win, and those two are liabilities. So tell me how we’re going to account for that, because considering their history, we’re going to lose at least one of them to an injury during the tournament.”

“I don’t know,” Thomas says, and his voice is stirred up now. He’s probably going to flip fin to work off his frustration as soon as Mat hangs up on him. “It depends on who shakes out for the rest of the roster. Some of the others here can help, and if not, some of the O boys might be able to do something. We can’t stop them outright, not when they’re Champions, but we can control it, or pitch it in our favour. That’s the best possible solution.”

Mat winces. “It’s not perfect, but I’ll have to take it, I guess.”

Thomas is almost definitely laughing at him now; Mat can hear it in his voice. “You don’t have a choice about it. How about you? Are any of your Dub boys going to eat another one of your Dub boys?”

“Shit. Fuck. I didn’t even think about it. Damn you,” Mat swears, because that is a legitimate concern every year, and this year he’s the only Dub boy returning to World Juniors so now it’s his fucking responsibility. Normally Mat wouldn’t mind if something like that happened, but he wants to fucking win this year, and that means no one can eat anyone else until _after_ the tournament.

Thomas starts laughing out loud then, and Mat stops talking so he can listen to it, sweet like a burbling river. Thomas always reminds him of times gone by, of the water where he used to live. Mat’s not exactly for the water, despite all the ways he seems to be, but Thomas still never fails to remind him of home. Sometimes Mat regrets that he went west, to BC, instead of east, to Québec, but the fact remains that when he was that young, an ocean wasn’t enough distance to keep him from feeling the tug of home. And even when he had an ocean and a continent separating him, some days he woke up and his throat ached so fiercely for home that all he could do was feed, and feed, and feed, and hope that satiation would stop the homesickness. It never did.

Thomas finally stops laughing, and his voice has a certain gravity to it now. Mat wonders if it’s his alternate captain voice, but files away that thought for later to listen to Thomas. “I’m serious, maybe if we plan early this year we can stop anyone from being almost eaten. We can have zero incidents.”

“I’ll take a look but I think we might be good this year? I don’t think any of the Dub boys are apex predators,” Mat says, running through the list of potential teammates. “And that’s assuming that they’re all shifters, and not anything unusual.”

“Should I ask Dylan about the O?” Thomas asks.

“No, I don’t think so. He’s busy trying to make the roster in Arizona,” Mat says. “And besides, the O never has anything particularly worrying. The O is mostly party tricks.”

Thomas snorts. “That’s mean, Mat.” Thomas isn’t actively disagreeing with him, though, which means that he secretly agrees.This is what true Dub and Q solidarity looks like: ragging on the O, which always gets all the fucking attention despite being the least interesting league.

“Hey, tell me what you’ve been up to,” Mat requests, after a silence that goes on long enough to be a little uncomfortable.

Thomas doesn’t hesitate for even a second, transitions straight into a story about the nonsense his teammates get up to, and Mat closes his eyes and lets the ebb and flow of his voice soothe him. Chabs isn’t simple, but Mat still understands what makes him tick. He thinks Thomas understands what makes him tick too. He knows how Thomas’s bones pull him towards the water, knows that Thomas would have refused to report if he’d been drafted to an inland team, the same way Mat would’ve refused to report if he’d ended up on an inland team. The two of them are not so different at a certain base level.

Last year, in Helsinki, Thomas had let Mat touch his coat, at a time that was neither night nor morning but was way past their curfew. Thomas had knocked on his doorway just past midnight with a dappled grey bundle in his arms, and Mat had followed him out to the water, and Mat had asked to touch. He’d thought Thomas was going to say no, but he hadn’t, his eyes darker than the night sky as he held out his skin, draped over his forearms. Afterwards, Mat had taken off his shoes and rolled up the cuffs of his pants and sat with his feet in the freezing water, and Thomas had wrapped himself in his skin and swum in the gulf until the sky was starting to lighten with false dawn. He hadn’t let Mat hold his coat when he got out, but Mat thinks he might, this year. Mat wants Thomas to ask him to, wants it so much that he can only admit it when it’s so late it’s almost morning, and the darkness hides his face. Mat’s never been good at his own emotions, only good at manipulating others’ emotions.

“Are you still there?” Thomas prompts, voice almost gentle.

“Still here,” Mat manages, through a throat that feels knotted shut. It’s unfair how much Thomas reminds him of a home that doesn’t exist anymore, his voice like a sea Mat hasn’t seen in centuries and probably never will again.

“Do you want me to keep talking?” Thomas asks, voice careful like he’s trying to handle Mat.

“Tell me again about how you and Jozy messed with those harbour seals, why don’t you?” Mat tries to make it sound lighthearted but it lands a little wrong, a little like Mat is trying too hard to sound normal. Mat doesn’t know why his voice is drawn just a little too tight, just a little bit ready to snap.

Thomas lets it go, though, and launches into the story again, but his voice is softer this time. Mat squeezes his eyes shut tighter, until he can almost see Thomas’s dark eyes and the water in Helsinki, and a pale shape racing through water lit by moonlight, invisible to human eyes but not to Mat’s. Thomas launches into another story and Mat still sees Thomas the seal but the water is different now, an innocuous bright blue hiding rocks that wrecked thousands of ships and would gladly wreck thousands more. Mat opens his eyes, and blinks away excess moisture.

“Chabs, I have to go,” he lies, cutting into the middle of a story that might be about sea urchins but also might be about the Q’s exceptional status wunderkind. He hasn’t been paying attention to the words, just to the shape of them and the weight of Thomas’s voice.

“Okay,” Thomas says, and his voice is soft like it gets when he has to give interviews in English. “Till next time, Mathew.”

He hangs up so Mat doesn’t have to, and Mat stares at the phone in his hand until the screen goes black. As much as he’s here in BC, he’s also on an island in the Old World where he had family to sing with. Where the bigger the wreckage, the more entertainment there was. He hasn’t seen another of his kind in ages, and the Old World doesn’t hold the same kind of charm it used to. Mat’s not sure his island exists anymore, and he’s too afraid to check and find out that it’s gone.

* * *

The next time Mat calls Thomas is about a week out from that previous call. Mat has any number of apps through which him and Thomas have inane conversations that carefully avoid talking about anything important, but they always call for the other stuff. The stuff that causes Chabs to hide a silvery grey skin with his things, even when he travels. The stuff that explains why Mat knows where all the shadiest places are for every town with a Dub team, where a person could disappear and no one would notice until Mat is long gone.

“Hello, Chabshow,” Mat says, his voice the slightest bit sing-song, still in that language that sounds almost like French. His voice doesn’t work as well over the phone, and Thomas has natural immunity, anyway. This won’t even ping on his radar. Even for humans, it’ll maybe make them a little more inclined to listen to him, and then only if they’re having a face-to-face conversation. Mat loves modern technology, but occasionally it makes his life harder than it needs to be. He has to work to compel people over the phone.

“Mat,” Thomas says, and he sounds less tired than he did last time, but still too tired for November. Mat’s mouth is starting to water, the urge to eat people rising again. He’ll have to go out tonight; it’s been a couple days since he’s eaten. Honestly, at this point, he should be prepared to go out every night after he calls Thomas, especially if Thomas continues to sound this exhausted all the time.

“What, no greeting from you?” Mat deflects.

“Hello, Mat. Why are you calling today?” Thomas asks, his voice bone dry. “You played a game tonight, didn’t you?”

“You pay attention to my games?” Mat asks, surprise sliding over his tongue. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised--it takes maybe five minutes to look up the box scores, but still: they play in different leagues, on different sides of the country. What could Thomas possibly be getting out of keeping track of Mat? Mat only keeps track of Thomas because Thomas screams home in a way nothing has since he left the island.

Thomas sounds frustrated with Mat, for some reason. “Of course I pay attention to your games. Are you telling me you don’t pay attention to mine?”

“Crush those Screaming Eagles tomorrow, okay?” Mat says, instead of directly admitting it.

The way Thomas laughs is a little disbelievingly breathless, like he’d asked out on a limb and then was surprised to find that he’d hit the mark dead center. Mat gets it--he’s cultivated the attitude of caring about nothing but winning, but he still thought Thomas knew him better than that. The ocean rules both their bones, after all, and always comes first. “You always manage to surprise me, Mat.”

Mat takes a moment to smile, lets himself melt into his headboard a little more, the exhaustion finally catching up to him. Maybe that’s why he’s a little more honest than he should be. Because it’s close to a new moon, and Mat trusts Thomas, against his better judgement, and he’s tired. “I’d say that’s a good thing. But really, I was calling because they sent Stromer down, which means he’ll come back this year, too. I hate the way he smells, Thomas. It sticks in my throat and it’s cloying as fuck. Last time I had to gargle with alcohol and then blood. It was a waste of perfectly good blood, too.”

Thomas laughs like Mat’s said something funny, then seems to realises Mat isn’t joking, his laugh cutting out in his throat. “Why do you hate the smell of death? Shouldn’t it be something you’re used to? You’re always surrounded by it yourself.”

“You know I don’t know what I smell like,” Mat says, his voice still lighthearted. Then he stops. He has to make a choice here, about whether he’s going to talk about it, or not. If he tells anyone, then Thomas would be top of the list, since he hasn’t seen any other siren since he left to explore the rest of the world. The minutes tick away, and he knows Thomas hasn’t hung up only because Mat can hear him breathing. When Mat speaks again, his voice is soft, just barely above a whisper. “How much do you know about where I came from?”

“You come from an island in the Old World. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, right?” Thomas asks, and his voice is soft too, like he knows how much Mat is conceding by talking about it.

“Somewhere like that,” Mat agrees, blinking furiously, and continuing to speak through a throat that has something lodged in it. “There were a lot of rocks. A lot of cliffs.”

He swallows, clears his throat, pauses. It hurts to think about it, hurts even more to tell someone else. Mat feels like he’s carved out a chunk of himself and is offering it up to Thomas, warm and dripping with blood, sent through the phone line. The wonders of modern technology will never cease.

Thomas speaks, his voice still that careful, gentle soft, and that almost hurts more. “You don’t have to--”

“After feeding, we’d leave the bodies there,” Mat blurts out, before he can think about it any further. “They’d decompose on the beach, with leftover flesh still attached, and the beach was made of bones and driftwood, but mostly bone, piled up and stripped clean over time, blazing white. But that doesn’t matter for this. The important thing is, Thomas, I know what rotting meat smells like. I’m intimately familiar with what death smells like. And that’s not what Dylan smells like at all. He’s something else, entirely, and it doesn’t smell natural, or right, and it sticks in my fucking throat and everything I eat afterwards is overlaid by it unless I go through a frankly worrying amount of alcohol and blood that I’d rather be consuming.”

Thomas is quiet for a long moment, and when he speaks, it’s not to ask the question Mat had expected. “You miss it, don’t you? Your island?”

Mat mutes the phone and lets himself let out one small, hiccuping sob for everything that he’s lost that he’s just been reminded of, before unmuting the phone to answer Thomas, the tears finally spilling down his face. “Like the tides to the moon, Thomas. It’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a true north.” He tries to ignore how his voice is trembling. He can feel every mile separating him from the island he came from tonight, bones hurting down to the marrow. This stupid human form is stifling in a way it hasn’t been in centuries.

Thomas releases a heavy sigh. “I owe you an apology the next time we see each other, Mathew Barzal. It’ll mean nothing over the phone.”

Debts are serious business for them when the two of them are the way they are, and that’s how Mat knows that Thomas understands exactly what he’s teased out of the darkest, most hidden corners of Mat.

“Would it help, if I tell you a story?” Thomas continues, his voice tentative.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Mat says.

“Yes, it could,” Thomas rebukes, but his voice is still gentle, like he knows how fragile Mat is right now. “But I’ll tell you anyway. How much do you know about what I am?”

“Not a lot,” Mat answers, scrubbing at his eyes with his free hand. “I told you, you’re the first of your kind that I’ve ever met.”

Thomas, thankfully, ignores how Mat’s voice shakes. “My entire family is fae, but not all of us are selkie. The gene, or the magic, or whatever, skips. And I don’t remember when I first went out to sea, but I remember the first time I went out alone, because it’s a rite of passage, and I waited. Usually my parents would drive me down to the ocean, but I didn’t want them there, so I waited till I was in Saint John.”

“Did you commune with all your harbour seals?” Mat asks, trying to inject the asshole back into his voice. Thomas is rambling a lot, like people do when they’re nervous, and it’s making Mat uncomfortable. The sooner he stops making Thomas feel weird about getting Mat to tell him about his past, the better, because Thomas is almost panicky, and he’s never dealt with a panicky Thomas. He’s not sure he knows how to deal with a panicky Thomas. It’s possible that the idea of a panicky Thomas is making him feel panicky.

Thomas takes a deep breath, and slowly releases it, like he’s trying to gather patience. “Mat.”

“I meant the actual seals!” Mat protests, but the no-nonsense tone to Thomas’s voice helps calm him. Thomas probably isn’t panicking if he manages to sound that done with Mat’s general state of being, therefore Mat doesn’t need to panic either. And even though his eyes feel swollen, they’re dry for the moment. Funny how unintentionally being an asshole to Thomas does that, but it’s two positives in the space of about thirty seconds. Mat is totally winning at life.

Thomas pauses for a very long moment. “You know, I think you might be telling the truth.” His voice is just this side of dry, which means that he’s just taking the piss now.

“I _am_ capable of telling the truth,” Mat snaps. “I’m not quite one of your tricky fae assholes.”

“Almost as touchy as one, though,” Thomas says. “Or, no, you know what? You’d make an excellent cat.”

“Take that back right now, you know I’m part-bird,” Mat hisses into the phone. “Cats eat birds, Thomas, why would you even say that?”

Thomas starts laughing because he’s an asshole. Mat wants to hate him a little bit for that, but he feels more like normal now so he guesses Thomas gets a get-out-of-jail-free card, except in this case it’s more a get-out-of-being-food-and/or-miserably-cursed-and/or-compelled-by-Mat’s-voice card.

“Were you going to finish your story?” Mat asks, when he can’t take any more of Thomas’s laughter. He still feels fragile. Still feels ready to shake himself undone.

“The most important part of that story was me and the sea, anyway,” Thomas says, switching to that low, serious voice he has sometimes that Mat privately thinks is his future NHL captain voice. “And you already know all about that, don’t you? Tides in your pulse and the undertow in your bones. Nothing will ever matter as much, and nothing will ever be as perfect.”

And when Thomas puts it like that, then yes, Mat knows. There’s a reason him and Thomas get along, after all.

* * *

This time, Thomas is the one who calls first, and only about three days after their last call. Mat almost doesn’t pick up, because they’re on the bus and he put off feeding, so he’s a little grumpy despite having a three point night and a win, sitting with his headphones in and music blasting. He’s used to feeding regularly, even if he can theoretically make it weeks without feeding. The thing is, though, Thomas usually texts a warning before calling. Mat is the one who just calls out of nowhere, in their friendship.

Mat picks up. He’s too curious not to, and maybe a little worried as well. “Hello?” He asks, in English, because at least a few of the boys are awake right now, and it might not be a call that requires them to use the other language, and he hates fielding questions about his ability to speak French, even though he’s not usually speaking French. Humans: their idiocy never ends.

“Hello Mat,” Thomas says, tongue tripping over the words, but still using the right language--which is to say, not-French. Looks like Mat’s going to have this conversation on the bus, in not-French. He’s so lucky he’s the only fae creature on this team; he can already feel that this is going to be a ridiculous conversation.

“Are you sitting in your bedroom drinking box wine while on social media again?” Mat asks, slightly incredulous. It’s a little amazing that he’s so familiar with Thomas’s habits that he can tell what he’s doing within two words.

“No,” Thomas says, very unconvincingly.

It’s drawn out a little too long. Mat waits.

“I’m in bed with box wine scrolling through social media”--ha, Mat was right--“waiting to get drunk enough to make swimming a really fun time,” Thomas admits, only slurring a little bit. “We won and we don’t play again for like four days. We have no skate tomorrow, and it’s early in the season and a Friday.”

“And you got two assists, I know,” Mat says, somewhat amused but more concerned about Thomas’s post-win plans. He’s not even remotely surprised that Thomas planned out the perfect time to get completely wasted, but swimming while wasted seems like a terrible idea. “Now, tell me, are you planning to go swimming as you are or with your skin?”

“Did you watch the game?” Thomas asks, sounding just the slightest bit shy. “And with my skin, obviously.”

Mat winces. There’s no way that’s going to go well. If Thomas has been drinking enough to be tripping over his words and is still drinking, there’s no way he should be putting on his skin and going out, especially not alone. Thomas isn’t a lightweight--he’s definitely had plenty to drink. “I watched as much of it as I could, anyway--I had my own game.”

“I’m glad you tried. To watch even that much of it,” Thomas says, voice very soft. “What did you think?”

“Those were two very nice assists and to top it off, you won. Why are you celebrating alone?” Mat asks. He can see his reflection in the bus window, and his cheeks are flushed, and he’s not sure why. As it is, Thomas has already cheered him up and distracted him from how much he wants to sink his teeth into something right now, so he privately resolves to do a very nice thing for Thomas later. His human teammates had chosen not to sit too close to him, and the ones who were shifters had stayed as far from him as possible, but he’ll be more bearable now.

“Jozy isn’t as into the swimming post-win thing. Enough water spirit in him to not need anything to shift, but not enough to pull his bones. He likes it, but doesn’t need it, so he went out to celebrate with everyone else,” Thomas complains.

Mat smiles involuntarily. Thomas sounds hilariously grumpy, sloppy in a way he doesn’t usually let himself get, and Mat can almost see the pout on his face. “So now you’re doing the classy thing and drinking box wine in bed.”

Thomas sighs, almost hilariously put-upon. “Sometimes you can’t be a classy ho, Mat. Sometimes you just have to drink box wine in bed.”

Mat bursts into laughter that he tries to muffle by covering his mouth with a sleeve, but he’s partially unsuccessful. Mostly unsuccessful. There are at least three glares being directed his way, and those are just the ones he can see. “I wish I was recording this conversation just to play it back to you tomorrow morning.”

“I stand by what I said,” Thomas says. “It’s great for getting shitfaced, and I bet the water will be really nice tonight.”

“Thomas,” Mat starts. “You can drink more, but please don’t go swimming alone. I don’t know how drinking affects your shift when you put on your skin, but I can’t imagine that it’s safe.”

“Jozy won’t go with me, though,” Thomas whines.

Mat stifles another laugh. Thomas always reverts when he’s drunk, almost hilariously bratty, the fae in him coming out stronger. “Don’t go, tonight. I’ll stay on the line with you while you keep drinking your trashy box wine, and if you ask nicely, I won’t sing you to sleep to cut you off.”

“You’d really do that?” Thomas asks.

“Well, not right now. I’m on the bus,” Mat says. “I’m not interested in being more human than I need to be, but even they would notice if the driver falls asleep because of my singing, and I won’t kill my entire hockey team for you. Humans would probably notice that, and also I want to win. But if you’re not asleep and you want me to actually sing you to sleep, sure, I could do that.”

Thomas makes a sound like he’s been punched, and Mat can hear, if he concentrates, the sound of sloshing wine. Thomas has apparently decided to chug his wine and go for broke. He’s going to be hungover as shit tomorrow, but considering that he drunk-dialed Mat to complain about Jozy not wanting to swim with him, he was already going to be hungover as shit.

“Wait. You’re on the bus?” Thomas asks, sounding halfway frantic. “Why are you on the phone with me if you’re _on the bus;_ all your teammates are going to _hate_ you.”

And then he hangs up on Mat.

Mat calls him back, of course, and keeps his voice quiet, but heated. “You fucking idiot, I wouldn’t have picked up if I had a problem with talking to you while on the bus. You know me.”

“Oh,” Thomas says, his voice small but pleased.

Mat’s face feels hot and he’s not sure why. “Anything fun happening on Instagram?”

Thomas snorts. “Typical Friday night shenanigans. It’s all dumb shit. You’re better. Kinda wish you were here; I could go swimming then, right?”

Mat tries to bite down on his smile, but he fails miserably. He shifts in his seat to find a more comfortable position, so his phone can keep charging while he talks to Thomas, and even he can hear the warmth in his voice. “Yeah, I kinda wish I were there so you could stop complaining about it. I’m sorry you can’t go swimming; I just don’t want anything to happen to WJC Canada’s Number One D-Man.”

“A little presumptuous, aren’t you?” Thomas asks, but Mat can hear the laughter in his voice.

“How can you be so wasted and yet you can say the word ‘presumptuous?’” Mat asks, trying to keep his laughter quiet.

“I’m a creature of many talents,” Thomas says, trying to sound serious but bursting into small giggles that are, frankly, adorable. Mat wishes it were December already.

“Yeah? How much box wine have you made it through already?” Mat asks.

Thomas snickers. “So much box wine. You know how much longer it takes us to get drunk-drunk.”

“I know. Drinking out is the worst--if I stay home or bring my own alcohol, I can at least dose it with the good stuff to make it more potent,” Mat says, wrinkling his nose. “And also it’ll taste better than some of the weird shit that they bottle as liquor these days.”

“What’s the good stuff?” Thomas asks. “Do you seriously doctor your own drinks?”

“Fae things, tips and tricks to make things more fun for us. We never really had alcohol on the island, you know? That’s a thing I learned after leaving. I also learned that Russian fae are not to be trifled with,” Mat says. “I’ll show you in December, okay?”

“Russian fae? You can’t just say that and not explain, Mat,” Thomas pleads. “Did you seriously live in Russia?”

Mat smiles, settles deeper into his seat. “I did. But this was way before Russia existed as Russia, way back in antiquity, when Colchis was still a functioning kingdom.”

“And?” Thomas asks.

“They have the cold in their bones the way we have water. Some of them looked like frost figurines, like if you even touched them they’d melt away into nothing, barely corporeal. I’d assume they’ve retreated north now, with the spread of humanity being the way it is. They were even less interested in catering to humanity than I am,” Mat says, and feels a little melancholy. They’d been good to him, back then, young and learning how the world outside of his island worked, and they’d liked him--water isn’t that far off from ice, not for them. They’d introduced him to most of his off-island firsts, too, and they’d been the ones to teach him to skate, on blades made of bone, tied to his feet with leather.

“So that’s where you learned it?” Thomas teases.

“Probably,” Mat says, smiling. He had fun with them, but the cold wasn’t good for him in the long run--he’d needed to move on. “But humans really do notice so little, so why go to more effort than you have to?”

“It’s called ‘precautionary measures,’” Thomas says, surprisingly coherent for someone who’s made his way through probably half a litre more of wine while on the phone with Mat.

“Ooh, polysyllabic words, good job,” Mat says, because he’s not above being an asshole.

Thomas ignores him. “Will you tell me another story like the one about your Russian fae?”

“What kind of story?” Mat asks. Thomas is asking for a lot from Mat, but Mat thinks he’d be happy to give it to him, in most cases. Certain stories he can’t touch for Thomas. Certain stories he can’t touch even for himself.

“Something that makes you happy,” Thomas says. “Something that makes you happy without making you sad, too. You’re sad all the time, Mat, so tell me a happy story.”

The first thing Mat thinks of is a partly moonlit night in Helsinki, but that’s not a story he can tell Thomas; it’s a story Thomas has lived. So he thinks of other moments, and pretends that Thomas noticing the way Mat is unravelling at the core doesn’t make him feel tired and sad. It used to be that no one could tell that Mat was falling apart, not even Mat himself.

Thomas falls asleep between one breath and the next in the middle of a story Mat is telling him about the little colourful markets that existed down alleyways that led to the fae plane, when Macedonia was reaching the heights of its power. His voice is a little hoarse from talking. Thomas interjected on occasion, so Mat took quick sips of water when he could, but on the whole he seemed content to just let Mat talk. Mat could hang up, now, but Thomas is so very drunk, and Thomas is still human enough in this form that choking on his vomit is a thing that could happen to him. He’s always been a frequent drinker, not a heavy one, and Mat can’t, in good conscience, leave him as he is.

Mat resettles himself into his seat, adjusts his headphones to make sure he’s getting Thomas’s breathing at the loudest possible volume, and continues to rehydrate. He doesn’t want to have to sing on the bus, but there’s still probably another hour and half until they’re back in Kent, and if he has to, then he will. Mat drifts, not quite in his body and not quite out, anchored by Thomas’s mostly steady breathing. He stays on the line in Kent, too, unplugs his headphones once he reaches his bedroom, turns speakerphone on, plugs his phone into the charger. Rather than going anywhere near his bed, he opens his windows and sits right underneath them, the cold wind ruffling his hair and numbing his face. He hasn’t had time like this in what feels like close to forever, where he ignores the limits of his body and exists on his own, unmoored. His room smells like salt and cold and home and over it all is the sound of Thomas’s breathing, Thomas who reminds Mat of home.

The thing that shakes him out of the trance state he’s fallen into is a voice, confused, speaking into the phone.

“Hey, is Chabshow awake?” Mat asks, in English, just in case.

“What the fuck did you do to him last night, Mathew?” Jozy--or at least, that sounds an awful lot like Jozy--hisses into the phone, in not-French.

Mat rolls his eyes. Jozy’s convinced Mat wants something from Thomas, and is running a long con to get it. “He got drunk on box wine and wanted to swim in the harbour, but you didn’t want to go with him so he would have hurt himself, probably. I just stayed on the line to talk him out of it and make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit. Actually, please wake him up; it’s afternoon and he’s going to totally fuck himself over if he doesn’t wake up soon. And I’d like to talk to him before I go eat and nap.”

“You stayed on the line all night?” Jozy asks, voice incredulous. Is it really that hard to believe that Mat can do good things sometimes?

“Yeah, so are you going to wake him up or not?” Mat asks, irritated. He’s tired and hungry and doesn’t have a lot of patience for Jozy’s suspicion.

A lot of yelling later, Thomas is mumbling a good morning into the phone.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Mat says with a cheerfulness he doesn’t feel. “Even though it’s definitely afternoon for you.”

“You didn’t have to check in, you know?” Thomas says, voice sleep-rough. “I know you have things to do.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Mat says, stifling a yawn. “Drink a lot of water, Chabshow. Can’t have WJC Canada’s Number One D-Man getting sick.”

“Again with that?” Thomas asks, laughing a little.

“If you’re not number one, then you should be,” Mat drawls. “I’ll make it so you are.”

He can still hear the laughter in Thomas’s voice. “Don’t kill a prospect, Mathew. We’ll probably need whoever number one is to win.”

“I never said I'd kill anyone, and I won't have to. It’ll be you,” Mat protests. And if it’s not, they’re blind.

“Goodbye, Mathew,” Thomas says, laughing sleepily. “You’re sweet. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Bye,” Mat says, hanging up. His cheeks feel abnormally warm and he can’t stop smiling, even though he's exhausted.

* * *

Mat has five missed calls from Thomas, post-game. Of course he calls back.

Thomas picks up with a sleepy hello in the right language.

“Did you know it was me or did you just guess?” Mat asks.

“You have your own ringtone, idiot,” Thomas says, sounding only half-awake. “What do you want?”

“You left five missed calls,” Mat says, striving to keep his voice even. “I thought--”

“I just wanted to complain about how much I hated you and Jozy, but then I found out that you stayed up all night before a game after playing a game. Are you fucking insane?” Thomas’s voice sounds a lot more awake all of a sudden. It also sounds like he’s trying his best to rein in his anger, but Mat can almost taste how furious he is, which is new and somewhat frightening.

“Are you actually mad at me right now?” Mat asks. “Or, like, is this you projecting your hangover--”

“No, I am not projecting my hangover; I’m actually mad at you, Mathew. What the fuck, do you have no regard for your own fucking self?” Thomas hisses through the phone line. “You--I know you’re not human, but you’re still in a human body right now. I don’t know how you played so well on so little sleep; no amount of human flesh would actually make up for the deficiency. What the fuck were you thinking?”

Thomas isn’t just mad--he’s livid, and Mat doesn’t really get why. “It’s my body, Chabshow. It’s fine, no harm, no foul, and besides I--”

“It’s reckless as fuck,” Thomas says. “What if you got hurt because you weren’t paying attention on ice, then what? What if you lost your glamour, and exposed yourself? None of us are close enough to help you, Mat, not even through the gates.”

“Look, I get it, but I--”

Thomas cuts him off and starts ranting about death wishes and idiocy and _not fucking listening, Mathew._ Ironic, then, that he’s the one not listening to Mat, but Mat is starting to get pissed, too. He’s touched by the worry, but he wasn’t born yesterday.

So Mat reaches down into himself, and when he speaks, it’s with the full force of his voice. “Shut up and listen, Thomas. Just, let me talk.”

Thomas stops mid-word, and Mat’s sure that Thomas is just getting angrier at him. Mat’s never actually used his voice on Thomas intentionally, and it must be jarring, to have your body not do what you expect it to do, not that Mat has any experience with that. He switches back to his regular voice, no more siren-speak now that it’s served its purpose, carefully thinking about what he’s saying to make sure that his point gets across. “I get that you’re worried or whatever, but I wish you’d listen to me instead of cutting me off at every turn. So, first of all, I’m sorry for using my voice on you, but you weren’t listening, and you were blowing things way out of proportion. I’m fine, Thomas. I called in a favour and slept in the other plane. I’ve ruined my sleep schedule a bit, but I got the proper amount of sleep before I went and played, okay? I promise you, I’m fine. But you, just now? You overstepped. It’s one thing to worry about my life choices, and another entirely to do what you just did. You were in the wrong here. How would you feel if I called and yelled at you for eating food that wasn’t exactly in your diet plan, even though you have a cheat day? You don’t know my needs better than I do. Just--think over that, okay, before you speak again.”

Mat watches the clock tick, considers it a good sign that Thomas hasn’t hung up and is taking his time to think about it. Five full, long minutes pass before Thomas speaks, and he sounds appropriately chastened. “It’s okay, then, that you used your voice on me. I’m not happy about it, but I understand. I was maybe being a little unfair to you, but Mat, you have to understand, I was thinking that if you got hurt this game, it would be my fault, and for a stupid reason, too.”

“Thomas,” Mat says, feeling helplessly endeared. “Thomas, no, it wouldn’t be. You didn’t ask me to stay up for you, I chose to do it. It would be my fault, for being an idiot.”

“But still, you wouldn’t have stayed up if you hadn’t thought I needed it,” Thomas says, because he’s got some kind of responsibility complex. Maybe a bit of a martyr complex, too. It’s possible that his A with the Sea Dogs has just been fueling whatever complex he has, too, because Mat does not remember him being nearly so obtuse before. Why does Mat like him so much, again?

“I enabled your drinking, so it’s still my fault,” Mat says firmly. “Seriously, this one’s not on you. No one can make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

“Mat, what holds you to this body?” Thomas asks, in a rapid subject change. “Is it--would it have broken, if you got hurt?”

He’s doing that thing again, where he tries to sound calm when he’s anything but. He’s really good at it, too, but it still puts Mat on edge, because Mat can hear the panic or whatever that Thomas is trying to quash. Mat gets it--if he drops his glamour, it puts all of them at risk, and Thomas has always been one for shouldering more responsibility than he needs to, with regards to the many not-exactly-humans in the Q. He has to worry about worst-case scenarios, but at least Mat can put his mind at ease here. “It won’t. It’s an external enchantment, not an internal one. It’ll hold through anything, including death. I made sure of it.”

“You made sure of it?” Thomas asks, sounding horrified.

Mat’s not sure why--oh, wait. “I didn’t test it out myself; I’m not suicidal, Thomas.”

Thomas is starting to laugh, sounding the littlest bit hysterical. He’s been through a lot of emotions, though, so Mat mostly forgives him. He's still mad about the yelling, though. “You didn’t cause like. A storm or anything, right?” Mat asks, a little nervous, although the weather on the East Coast is generally weird anyway, so even if Thomas did something, it wouldn’t be noticeable.

Thomas starts laughing harder, and there’s definitely a hysterical edge to it now. “No, storms aren’t my forte. The ocean might be a little weird the next couple of days, but otherwise we’re fine. You stress me out so much, Mat.”

“Hey,” Mat protests, mildly. “I’ve been doing just fine for centuries.”

“I know, but--” Thomas starts and doesn’t finish, evidently thinking better than to accidentally put his foot in his mouth again. Smart choice, but now there’s an awkward silence.

“How about we put this behind us, and you tell me how your day was, instead?” Mat asks, gently. He won’t forget it quickly, of course not, but he’s trying to give Thomas an out. He doesn’t think either of them want to talk about it right now, when they haven’t had time to decompress and actually think about it. Mat is exhausted and Thomas has been awake for all of ten minutes--if they pretend things are normal for the rest of this call, it can’t hurt. Mat knows Thomas meant well, but the fact that he had to resort to using his voice to make Thomas listen to him makes him feel...well, he’s trying not to think about it right now. If he thinks about it, he's going to--he just can't right now.

“Are you--okay, fine,” Thomas sounds defeated, for the moment. “Jozy wouldn’t let me grab my sunglasses and was being a little shit all day. I fell asleep with an ice pack on my face.”

“So, regular Jozy, right?” Mat asks, trying to keep his voice light.

“Yeah, regular, run-of-the-mill Jozy,” Thomas says, sounding somewhat hesitant. “Now he thinks you’ve corrupted me.”

“It’s not our fault he’s so human,” Mat counters. “You just try to hide it better. I don’t give a fuck.”

“I also don’t eat humans. I’ve heard that helps,” Thomas says dryly. He almost sounds normal, but there’s still lingering tension. They're not over it; they're just ignoring it. “Although I’m sure Jozy’s expecting the worst.”

“Does Jozy think I’ve converted you to eating humans?” Mat asks, trying to contain his delight.

“I’m not--no, I don’t think so. I think he might think you stole my soul or something,” Thomas says, sounding amused. They’re almost normal. They can do this.

Mat snorts. “He knows I can’t actually do that, right? He’s more capable of stealing a soul than I am.”

“To be fair, you really threw him for a loop this morning,” Thomas says.

“It was afternoon,” Mat points out. “You fucked up my plans big-time, Chabshow.” Shit. That was the wrong thing to say. They were doing so well, too, almost back into the rhythm of how they generally are.

“I didn’t ask you to stay on the line,” Thomas says, sounding hurt, and a little angry. Considering the fact that they’ve already argued about it once this call, this is not good. Time to distract Thomas.

“I told you already, it was no big deal. You were drinking a lot more than you usually do, and I was worried. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you that fucked up, and it would suck if something happened to you with only two weeks till camp, Chabshow. It was just that I had to figure out how to feed in daytime, which, for the record, is difficult and annoying in modern times. You’re so much likelier to get caught. I’m never going to skip regular feeding during the season again; it makes all my teammates nervous when I get that cranky, especially the human ones, like they’re finally using their brains and something isn’t adding up,” Mat says, struggling to keep his voice light and easy.

“How many days did you go without feeding? Why?” Thomas asks, suddenly sounding very concerned for Mat’s sake. Which is very much like Thomas, to be worried that Mat’s going to cause an incident. Mat knew he’d take the bait, and now maybe Thomas can be distracted with the prospect of learning more about how Mat works as a creature.

“About a week, but that’s not so bad? I’m capable of going weeks without feeding; it’s just that I’m unused to it,” Mat tells Thomas, downplaying it as much as he can. “You get used to a regular diet, you know?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Thomas says, his voice wooden.

Mat flinches a little. He’s fucked up again and he’s not sure what it is this time, but Thomas’s voice is about as yielding as stone. He plasters on a smile to inject cheer into his voice. “It’s whatever; I more than made up for it. Shit happens, sometimes.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Thomas says. Mat can still hear traces of ice in his voice, which is unfortunate.

“Anyway, I should let you sleep, it’s probably late for you, isn’t it?” Mat says, not even bothering to disguise the tiredness that’s starting to infuse his voice. He doesn’t know what he’s done to make Thomas upset this second time, when they agreed to temporarily put the conversation they need to have on hold, but it’s more than he can deal with right now. Mat is physically tired and emotionally exhausted and he’s never felt so unsure about where he stands with Thomas, and it’s too fucking hard to pretend like everything’s normal when nothing is.

“Okay,” Thomas says, and he sounds so soft and unsure, and Mat is done. He doesn’t know what’s happening, or why Thomas has been blowing so hot and cold, but this is something they’ll talk about when they’re both in better frames of mind.

“Don’t--don’t be a stranger,” Mat says, and hangs up so he doesn’t have to hear Thomas’s soft voice anymore.

He falls asleep staring at his darkened phone screen, wondering what the fuck exactly went wrong. Usually Thomas is pretty rational, and there's guilt twisting Mat's insides up. He's never had to use his voice on a friend like that, and he doesn't like it.

* * *

Mat hasn’t reached out to Thomas since that night, not to call him, and he cut down on communicating through social media, too, restricting himself to obligatory Snaps that never have his face in them to keep their streak running and not much else. Thomas lets it go on his end, too, their only line of communication through innocuous pictures that show up only for seconds, and Mat figures they’re going to rehash their last conversation in person, but he’s mistaken.

Thomas calls while Mat finishing his packing. Mat has one more game before it’s time for World Juniors camp, but Thomas is finished already, his last game of the year a home game lost in OT where he’d had two assists on power play goals. A tough way to end the year. Mat had almost called Thomas, anyway.

Mat picks up, against his better judgment. “Hey,” he says, carefully neutral.

“So, it occurred to me that when you said ‘don’t be a stranger,’ you were saying that you were giving me whatever time I needed to process our last conversation, even though I was the one who was a dick to you, and you were just doing what you could, in that situation,” Thomas says, all in a rush.

“Are you drunk?” Mat asks, because he’s not stupid and usually Thomas is very discreet about acknowledging all the small ways in which Mat grants him concessions that he doesn’t grant anyone else. Him and Thomas never directly acknowledge these things. It makes Mat uncomfortable to be reminded that he has a blind spot where Thomas is concerned, originally built on Thomas being a creature of the sea, and now so complicated that it’s better if Mat doesn’t think about it all.

“Hold on, I’m going to FaceTime you. Pick up on your end with video; I want to see your ugly mug,” Thomas says, which isn’t an answer.

Mat picks up, makes sure his face is as unimpressed as he can get it to look. “My face is excellent, and if you’re calling my mug ugly, yours is just fucking tragic, Chabshow.”

“Shut up,” Thomas says, and he’s lying in bed in a worn Sea Dogs shirt and he looks soft. Good, though. The way his hair is cut makes his cheekbones look sharp, and even in his human form, Thomas’s eyes are ocean eyes, dark, pulling Mat in like the tide. Thomas’s face softens almost imperceptibly, and Mat forces himself to focus on the one loose strand of hair in Thomas’s face, so he doesn’t--so he doesn’t.

“Lame,” Mat responds, a beat too late.

“Hey, no, don’t deflect,” Thomas says, face drawn up all serious. “I’m not drunk, Mat. I thought you were too mad to talk to me, but that didn’t make sense, because you would have cut all communication. Then I thought you were going to wait till we both got here, but that didn’t make any sense either, because you’d have let things go on how they had been, so the only thing that made sense was that you were leaving the ball in my court and then giving me space.”

“Yeah, and?” Mat doesn’t get why Thomas has to evaluate and spell out the way Mat reacts to things. He knows Thomas knows him, doesn’t know what clearly stating it is supposed to prove.

Thomas sighs, shoulders slumping, brows furrowed. “Why the fuck, Mat? It was my fault.”

“It's not just on you. And, I won't lie, it sucked, but you were the one who really got stuck on it,” Mat tells him, trying to keep his voice even and face blank. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but they really need to talk about it. “I was upset because you weren’t listening and didn’t trust me to know myself and make my own choices. And I’m still not 100% with you, but I know you’ll do better. You, on the other hand...I don’t know, Thomas; I can’t read your mind. I don’t know what you want from me.”

Mat feels so helpless saying that last sentence out loud, but Thomas’s face is smoothing out to something lighter, like he might almost smile. “I’ll be better for you, don’t worry. As for what I want from you...well, you’ll figure it out. Just be yourself.” At that Thomas does smile, like he’s in on a joke that Mat isn’t, and can’t wait for the moment that Mat finally figures it out.

“I’ll figure it out? _Just be myself?_ ” Mat asks, voice just a shade too indignant. “What does that even mean, Chabshow?”

“What, are you telling me that your centuries of experience are useless to you?” Thomas asks, sly, because he knows Mat wants to win.

“I’ll figure it out and make you regret even setting this stupid fucking challenge,” Mat says, scowling. He can’t cross his arms and still hold his phone and that just makes him scowl harder.

Thomas is laughing, shoulders shaking, head thrown back, exposing the pale column of his throat. Mat wants to bite, but Thomas isn’t one of his expendable humans. He swallows, trying to get some moisture to his suddenly dry throat, but it’s too hard to drag his eyes away from the pale skin. The skin of the throat is particularly thin; blood runs close to the surface. That’s why it bruises so easy, after all. Mat really, really wants to bite. His mouth is so fucking dry.

“--Mat?” Thomas goes, and he’s stopped laughing, staring at Mat like Mat confuses him.

“I’m okay,” Mat offers. “I was just thinking of what my reward would be, when I win, you know?”

Thomas smirks. “It’ll be worth your while, I promise.”

“So I don’t get to choose my prize?” Mat asks, mock-frowning at Thomas.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Thomas says, his voice dipping down into seriousness. “I think it’ll be a prize you’ll like. You can choose which way you get it, though.”

“You’re not helpful at all,” Mat tells him, and he’s not pouting, exactly, but he is somewhere in the vicinity of it.

Thomas smiles at him. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Mat smiles back, and things still feel tender but okay. They’re going to be okay. Mat will do everything in his power to make sure that they are and that they stay that way. And Thomas promised to be better and Mat believes him. How could he not?

“How’s it going, though?” Mat asks. “I almost called you, after your game.”

He hadn’t meant to tell Thomas that, but he can’t take it back now. Thomas runs a hand through his hair and sighs, face slightly pinched. “Not what I wanted but we got a point. What are you up to?”

Mat pulls a face, running a hand through his face. “Packing. Which is the worst, by the way.”

“You picked the wrong job if you hate packing that much,” Thomas says, somewhat amused. “Want me to tell you stories while you pick between four near-identical suits?”

“If you don’t have anything else to do, sure,” Mat says, letting Thomas’s remark about his suits slide.

“I really, really don’t. And you can do that thing you do, where you freak Jozy out by smiling at him, because you’re remembering that story I told you about him and the sea urchin,” Thomas says.

“What story with him and the sea urchin?” Mat asks, more because Thomas wants him to than because he’s actually curious.

“I’m about to tell you,” Thomas says. “Put your phone somewhere you can still see me.”

Mat does--less concerned about what Thomas is saying and more focused on the cadence of Thomas’s voice. As he continues packing his things, he pretends he's not aware of Thomas's attention focused on him as Thomas talks, but he knows his ears are hot. It's a lot, to have all of the attention of someone like Thomas on him, even through a screen, and soon enough, he'll be seeing Thomas in person. He can't wait. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is nicknamed "idiot siren begins his idiot journey in the world of feelings" courtesy of Nat.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me @aimeraiwrites on tumblr <3


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